A man has reportedly claimed on Reddit to be the Austin bomber.
According to the New York Daily News, a Reddit user with the handle “austinbomber” said he wouldn’t stop the bombings until he’d become “as prolific as the Zodiac killer,” a never-solved Bay Area serial murder case in the late-1960s that involved at least five deaths.
“My intention is not to kill people. I am doing this simply because I want to watch the world burn,” “austinbomber” posted Tuesday.
The poster identified himself as “30-50 years old,” and doesn’t have “any terminal illness or anything like that.”
But like his Zodiac idol, he taunted the police in his Reddit posts, saying “I enjoy laughing at the massive police presence that just simply cannot find or deanonymize me.”
The account, according to the Daily News, posted a “string of disturbing messages” comparing himself to Zodiac, who engaged in a letter-writing campaign to San Francisco media and police.
The account was suspended and its messages scrubbed, the Daily News reported, adding though that the Austin Police Department knew of the posts.
Austin PD declined to say whether the Reddit poster is a suspect, telling the Daily News only that “we are currently investigating” the posts.
Notorious serial-murder cases, including Zodiac and reaching back to Jack the Ripper in the 1880s, have usually inspired false confessions to the police or fake letters to the media, though sometimes authentic ones too.
All told, two people have been killed and five injured in blasts around the Austin area that authorities have linked to what they are calling a “serial bomber.”
But, the Reddit poster noted, he is not guilty of racism.
“It’s not race-related like the media has speculated,” one message read, acknowledging early reports based on the fact some of the early victims were minorities.
The race has become random as the number of victims has increased.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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